We didn't want to focus too much time on the performance aspects of the Galaxy graphics card. Although, since we have a regular Palit 7300GT DDR-3 that utilizes the full speed x16 slot, we thought that it was a good opportunity to find out if there is actually any difference between PCI-E x1 and PCI-E x16 bus speeds. As discussed in the introduction, there is a total of 500MB/s of bandwidth (Single Data Lane - Both Directions) available on x1 slots compared to 8000MB/s of bandwidth compared to x16 slots, so the results should be interesting.

It's not a perfect world, so our testing couldn't be entirely spot on. The Palit 7300GT comes with a slightly higher memory clock speed of 600MHz vs. 500MHz on the Galaxy 7300GT. It shouldn't make a huge amount of difference but it's something to keep in mind while looking at the benchmark results.

We are running a cut down version of our benchmarks while still covering simulation and real-world environments. We will actually be using the same layout as the Catalyst line up minus the inclusion of our High Quality tests which utilize AA and AF. These types of tests are really too much for this level of low-end graphics cards and it's pointless including those types of tests.

3DMark05 is now the second latest version in the popular 3DMark "Gamers Benchmark" series. It includes a complete set of DX9 benchmarks which tests Shader Model 2.0 and above.

For more information on the 3DMark05 benchmark, we recommend you read our preview here.

Even though both models carry DDR-3 memory (albeit Galaxy a little slower) and utilize the same core, the PCI-E x1 version really does sit a way behind, even more so at the higher resolution, which is important to keep in mind. It's at the higher resolutions that more bandwidth is required as more stress is placed on the 3D side of the system.

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